


Roaring

by anderfels



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1920s, 1930s, Drabble, Gen, Great Depression, Historical, Historical Hetalia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Present Tense, Smoking, Snapshots, World War I, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:36:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anderfels/pseuds/anderfels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>12 snapshots of post-WWI America. For the Alfred to my Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roaring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coriander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coriander/gifts).



> [Happy birthday, Maddie. Lots of love, from your resident absolutely-useless-sometimes-attempts-to-write-stuff-friend.
> 
> P.S. You know how much I hate present tense writing. So really I have no idea what happened here. Sorry. eue;]

i.  
   The buildings are black and white in New York, like Exhibition photographs. There are tiles lining the subway station walls, most of them cracked, and Arthur has to step out of rhythm to avoid fallen shards; their hands slip together then, fingers tangle, as Alfred drags them up and out, air thick. They jaywalk, in from the street and into crooked stairs at the back of the room, jolting shoulders against the bannister, palms sticking. The door aches and slams. They scramble deeper across a paint-stained hardwood, crumble to the mattress.

  
   It’s been two years. Two years and five months and 13 days and they fuck accordingly – blind and desperate, teeth bumping teeth, a scrabbling for skin – and then slower, deeper, a shuddering in his stomach, hitch in his breath.

  
   “Fuck,” Arthur says, later, in the light from a bare window and a city sky, dappled neon on his cheekbones. “Fuck,” he says, because he always had a foul mouth and a furtive hand, his fingers closing over the curve of Alfred’s hipbone, just a little tighter than necessary. Alfred’s breath is shaking. They’re a tangle of legs and hair and sweat, and Arthur is still much too thin, too many bones, too much skin. He says nothing, never would, carries new scars and harder eyes and Alfred’s fingers never stray too close because Arthur would know.

  
   It’s silly and rhythmic, a child’s song, and Alfred has no doubt he could play the tune on Arthur’s ribs would it not earn him an empty bed. His head lolls, doll-like, and Arthur nuzzles closer as the air grows cold. Sleep is quiet, and the rain doesn’t sound like Sten guns.

 

ii.  
   Arthur rests his heels on the windowsill and smokes, extinguishing the match with the pads of his thumb and forefinger, licked. Alfred sits above him, stretched in the window frame like a cat, and smiles too wide for his face. He has licked those fingers, too. He has nipped that collarbone, sucked that skin, and can taste the cigarette hot scent of Arthur in the air, in tinier rooms than this one above emptier cafés with creakier floorboards, too. He has bitten and stroked and wrestled until Arthur was moaning and arching beneath him.

  
   His smile grows.

  
   He tuts and Arthur flicks his eyes to him, knocks Alfred’s ankle with his skinny toes.

  
   “What?” he says, and it’s barely a question, because the conversation has happened too many times to go any differently. Arthur is too old to change now, even if his scars are a new constellation of stars on his back.

  
“They’ll kill you,” Alfred says. He gestures for the matches and Arthur throws them at his chest.

  
“Not before you do, poppet,” Arthur mutters and watches closely as Alfred lights his own cigarette and flicks the match through the open window.

  
  Alfred isn’t sure whether that’s funny or not, but he laughs, and blows smoke at the glass.

 

iii.  
   The Lindy Hop is a bullet of a dance. Alfred wears a brand new jacket with fur on the collar. His shirt is starched. He laughs as he learns, and swings girls like they are spinning tops, watching their curls bounce with the hems of their dresses, their breasts.

  
   There’s a band, and the singer plays the clarinet. She has sorrel skin and red lips and Alfred thinks she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. He swivels and meets a blonde wearing sequins, catching her waist as she swings her legs about his hips and soars. The dress is red. Poppy red.

  
   He buys new shoes, white with black toes and black tongue, and the heels click as he dances on the sidewalk. The lampposts are almost as skinny as England’s winter trees.

 

iv.  
   Alfred buys Arthur new shoes too.

  
   Arthur sends them back without a note, and the newspapers save a tiny corner for him, starving across the ocean in the peacetime hush.

 

v.  
   It’s a year before he visits, and the winter comes in hard. He smiles too wide and sits on the desk in Baldwin’s office, his two-tone shoes swinging. Arthur’s lip twitches like his trigger finger. Baldwin talks like rumbling thunder and Arthur stands straighter than Alfred thinks is possible, his three fingers itching to salute. Alfred almost laughs.

Because Arthur always was a soldier, and no matter how many times they kill him, it seems Arthur has ‘stubborn’ written on his spine.

  
   It hails in February, and Arthur bruises like a peach. They don’t talk. Alfred doesn’t look at him, because Arthur bruises so easily, and his skeleton is still stark beneath the cotton of his shirts. He twitches with the slightest sound; stiff, upright, grey old Arthur.

  
   They don’t touch. Alfred goes to Paris. Francis is tired but can read him like the Constitution, points him along the avenues to the dance club with the best girls. The buildings are black and white, like dancing shoes, and the dresses are red and tight and sparkling. There’s a band, and a brass-haired bearcat with her fingers strumming the lithe neck of a beautiful double bass. Alfred flashes his teeth and the alcohol flows, and after he drinks, he can still just see where hips end and legs begin. The moonshine still ferments in his basement, back home, but this suffices for the night, and the moon shines on Montmartre, black and white.

  
   Arthur frowns at the meeting. His skin is pale, and he is thinking. They don’t talk. Alfred leaves before him and doesn’t say a word, eager for home, eager for New York neon and the midnight brass. He runs, and tries to touch the sky before the plane. This is his time, and Alfred don’t know from nothin’.

 

vi.  
   The Crash feels like gunshots.

  
   It’s a Tuesday.

 

vii.  
   Alfred smiles, because the sky is the colour of the penny candy on the corner of Fifth and East 57th. It’s cold, and for a moment, he thinks of England. Cold, grey England, dead soldiers across the ocean.

  
   There are thousands below in the square. If he listens, he can hear them, and their voices are a rising song in the space inside his skull. There’s no blood at first, but the bone shatters and stains his hair, and perhaps his leg breaks when it hits the concrete with a crack.

 

viii.  
   “Fuck,” Arthur says, and flicks two fingers against the back of his head. “Fuck.” Because Arthur always had a foul mouth and a sharp tongue and never says what he’s thinking.

  
“Ow.” Alfred looks at him and grins, and there are lines around his mouth. There’s blood in the collar of his jacket, still, and it cakes to the fur like the sun to the sand. Arthur digs his nails in and scrubs harder, and glares at the bristles of his scrubbing brush. The tin basin is full but the water is turning pink, and by the time it is red, Alfred’s head lolls, heavy with the emptiness of sleep.

  
“Could’ve killed you,” he says, when Alfred’s eyes are closed, and there is a tremor in his voice, the entire cavalry regiment, hooves in the mud.

  
“Not before you do, dollface.” Alfred does not open his eyes, and the night stretches thin.

  
   Later, Arthur picks blood from underneath his nails in the light from the gas lamp, and doesn’t know who it once belonged to. Alfred sleeps, heavy.

  
   Arthur is tempted to strangle him. For ever letting the thought cross his mind. For ever hoping it would work. For ensuring it didn’t.

  
   He doesn’t. The pain is familiar.

 

ix.  
   Sometimes the world is a small place. It’s been three years, five months, and twenty-two days, and they meet accordingly, in the back of a grimy East London alley. It’s raining. Alfred reckons that’s fitting, and holds Arthur to his chest as though he holds the key to his existence. Alfred reckons that’s fitting too.

  
   Arthur sniffs. Alfred’s eyes dart and settle, and he presses a kiss to the mess of his hair, and can wrap his arms around Arthur’s entire bulk and then some. Because Arthur always was selfishly selfless, and never asks for help no matter how much he might need it.

  
   “I love you,” Arthur says, miserably quiet. “Fuck, I- _Fuck_.”

  
   Alfred smiles and ruffles his wet hair, and dances on the sidewalk as they go.

 

x.  
   Arthur says there’s a war coming.

  
   Alfred laughs.

 

xi.  
   The radio chatters. Arthur stares at it, always, as though he will understand more with the intensity of his gaze. It is on almost constantly, and Alfred thinks that it’s a comfort to him, when the rioting makes his skull ache and the hunger drives him mad.

  
   He sits behind him and rests his cheek on Arthur’s shoulder blade to listen to his breathing. It rattles still. Arthur doesn’t encourage, but nor does he push away.

  
   Alfred takes that as a victory, and whispers that he loves him into the fabric of his shirt. Arthur finds his hand, and Alfred has won.

 

xii.  
   The buildings are red and gold in California, like the coronation of the (second) King. It’s dust and sand and rocks, but he loves it, and wipes sweat into his hair with the back of a bare arm. The work is hard, his hands fuzzy with the smell of hay.

  
   He stumbles as he dismounts, foot caught in the stirrup, and kicks his shoes at the wood of the door. They’re brown now, nubuck leather. His fingers slip on the latch and he laughs and meets Arthur on the staircase in a rush of air, eager hands, pushing upward to find his lips. They kiss, hot at the back of the neck, teeth on tongue and bumping noses. Alfred smiles, and kisses Arthur flat. It’s been two days and 5 hours, and they fuck accordingly – fast and hungry on the floorboards, Alfred erratic and Arthur fierce and snapping, his ankles hanging over the landing step.

  
   He complains, after, because Arthur is old and war-torn and worried, and clambers to his feet. He nudges Alfred with his foot and steps over him, heading down the hall and spreading his body over the bed. A horse whinnies in the yard and the bells on the cattle clang when the wind blows, but it’s quiet, and peaceful, and Alfred touches every scar he finds, new and old. Arthur glares, but softer now, and sometimes even smiles.

  
   They make love. Accordingly.

  
   Alfred lights the first cigarette.

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of references:  
> [Sten guns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sten_gun), the [Lindy Hop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Hop), basement [moonshine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine) during [Prohibition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States), the [Jazz Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_Age), [Montmartre during WWII](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_World_War_II) \- the home of the Moulin Rouge, a vibrant centre of music and art.
> 
> [The Great Depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression), [the Wall Street Crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929). Claims of suicides [following the stock market collapse](http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/america-1918-1939/wall-street-crash-of-1929-and-its-aftermath/) have long been disputed as baseless, but by 1932, suicide rates had risen to 23000 a year, as the Great Depression started to take hold around the USA.
> 
> Alfred's pain is familiar to Arthur, because he too has attempted suicide.
> 
> Hunger and starvation were rife in the UK between the wars, and the country saw a number of national hunger protests and riots, the most famous being [the Jarrow March](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarrow_Crusade).
> 
> Alfred and Arthur don't talk - the USA only officially joins the war many years later, in 1941.
> 
> [Stanley Baldwin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Baldwin) \- three times prime minister of the UK, and our most prevalent 'between the wars' leader. Criticised for post-WWI appeasement and for failing to recognise the danger Hitler posed until it was too late, but even today, looked on favourably for his handling of the build-up to WWII, and his popularity with the public.
> 
> [The Dust Bowl migration](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/dustbowl-mass-exodus-plains/) post Depression. The 'second King' refers to George VI, who ascended the throne after his brother, during [the abdication crisis of 1936](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VIII_abdication_crisis).
> 
>  
> 
> This is old now, and I'm long gone from the fandom, but I hope you enjoyed reading anyway.


End file.
